Georgia grand jury report on Trump election interference

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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) asked judges in the Georgia county not to schedule trials and in-person hearings in roughly the first half of August, a signal she may bring charges against former President Trump during that time.

Willis also indicated about 70 percent of her staff will work remotely on various days in August, according to a letter sent Thursday to local judges, law enforcement officials and elected officials.

“I respectfully request that judges not schedule trials and in person hearings during the weeks beginning Monday, August 7 and Monday, August 14,” Willis wrote. “If judges schedule in person hearings during the post-conference days when my office will be working partially remote, senior leadership will handle those proceedings.”

She also noted that few in-person proceedings will be held the week of July 31, because most judges will be attending the state’s annual judicial conference.

Willis gave no reason for the request but concluded the letter by thanking the recipients for their assistance in keeping the county’s judicial complex “safe during this time.”

:heart:

trump’s gonn’ win so many indictments everyone’s gonna get so tired of all his winning!!

A Georgia investigation into former President Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election is looking at his activities in other states, sources tell The Washington Post.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) is reportedly seeking information from two firms the Trump campaign hired to find election fraud throughout the U.S. following the 2020 election.

The campaign paid more than $1 million to Simpatico Software Systems and Berkeley Research Group but did not release the results after neither found evidence of widespread fraud, the Post reported.

“No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” Simpatico Software Systems founder Ken Block told the Post in April. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”

At least one of the two firms has received a subpoena in the Georgia investigations, according to the Post.

Georgia's Supreme Court on Monday denied Donald Trump's bid to halt the Fulton County district attorney's probe into whether the former president and his allies interfered in the state's 2020 presidential election.

The rejected petition was one of two Trump’s lawyers filed in different Georgia courthouses last week, both seeking to effectively derail District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into whether there were “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections.”

The petition sought to disqualify Willis from investigating Trump and to quash a report from the special grand jury she used to help her investigation.

In a brief, unanimous ruling, the nine-judge state Supreme Court said what Trump was seeking "is not the sort of relief that this Court affords, at least absent extraordinary circumstances that Petitioner has not shown are present here."

"Moreover, even if the petition were procedurally appropriate, Petitioner has not shown that he would be entitled to the relief he seeks," the court said.

A similar Trump petition filed Friday is pending before Fulton County Superior Court.

Both petitions sought a court order barring Willis “from introducing any evidence obtained via the special purpose grand jury process to a regular grand jury.”

A similar Trump petition filed Friday is pending before Fulton County Superior Court.

Both petitions sought a court order barring Willis “from introducing any evidence obtained via the special purpose grand jury process to a regular grand jury.”

The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia has developed evidence to charge a sprawling racketeering indictment next month, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The racketeering statute in Georgia requires prosecutors to show the existence of an “enterprise” – and a pattern of racketeering activity that is predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes.

In the Trump investigation, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the people said.

Willis had previously said she was weighing racketeering charges in her criminal investigation, but the new details about the direction and scope of the case come as prosecutors are expected to seek indictments starting in the first two weeks of August.

The racketeering statute in Georgia is more expansive than its federal counterpart, notably because any attempts to solicit or coerce the qualifying crimes can be included as predicate acts of racketeering activity, even when those crimes cannot be indicted separately.

The specific evidence was not clear, though the charge regarding influencing witnesses could include Trump’s conversations with Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the people said – and thereby implicate Trump.

For the computer trespass charge, where prosecutors would have to show that defendants used a computer or network without authority to interfere with a program or data, that would include the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, the two people said.

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team in Georgia is continuing its efforts to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fan Willis from pursuing her 2020 election interference investigation, as possible indictments in the state loom.

In a new, 650-page filing in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Trump’s lawyers stepped up attacks on Willis, a Democrat. CNN has previously reported that Willis is considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. The district attorney’s office declined to comment.

In the filing, Trump’s lawyers argue that due to Willis’ “conflict of interest” as a political candidate, she should not be allowed to continue to pursue the case.

“The District Attorney personally retweeted requests for followers and campaign donations which referenced her prosecution of this investigation,” Trump’s attorneys argued in the lengthy petition.

Trump’s Georgia legal team filed a petition last week, asking the court to throw out the evidence collected during investigation, to disqualify Willis and to remove Judge Robert McBurney from presiding over the case.

Earlier this week, the Georgia Supreme Court dismissed a similar bid from Trump.

The Georgia Supreme Court said in a five-page opinion that Trump hadn’t demonstrated the “extraordinary circumstances” that would require their intervention to block state prosecutors from ever using that material in any future criminal or civil proceedings.

Additionally, an Atlanta Judicial Circuit judge has ordered Fulton County Superior Court judges, including McBurney, to recuse themselves from overseeing attempts by Trump to essentially shut down the Fulton County criminal probe.

The circuit judge ordered that the judges in Georgia’s 7th District, which covers northwest Georgia, will now preside over the Trump vs. Willis petition. The order invited the newly appointed judges to arrange a courtroom in Fulton County “if necessary,” so it is still unclear where any future hearings on the case will be held.

Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis is asking for the FBI's help in providing security for buildings and staff one day after former President Donald Trump called prosecutors investigating him "racists." Trump also said his supporters should hold "the biggest protests we have ever had" in cities like Atlanta if the prosecutors "do anything wrong or illegal."

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis reaffirmed in a local news interview that she will announce charging decisions by September 1 in her investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result, while applauding the ramped-up security measures around the local courthouse.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event over the weekend. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

Willis has previously signaled in letters to local officials and those providing security that she would make any charging announcements between July 31 and the end of August.

Willis’ latest commitment to that time frame comes after a judge scheduled an August 10 hearing on the Trump team’s efforts to disqualify Willis, a Democrat, from the case, toss much of the evidence she has collected and remove another judge in Fulton County from presiding over the case.

In the local news interview, Willis also praised the Fulton County sheriff after barricades recently went up around the county courthouse in anticipation of what the sheriff’s office referred to as “high profile legal proceedings.”

“I think that the sheriff is doing something smart in making sure that the courthouse stays safe,” Willis said. “I’m not willing to put any of the employees or the constituents that come to the courthouse in harm’s way.”

Willis said that people may not be happy with her upcoming announcements and “sometimes when people are unhappy, they act in a way that could create harm.”

No potus could pardon trump in Georgia - state charges. Neither could a governor of Georgia; it's one of 3 states where the governor doesn't have pardon power like that.. it's a panel of 3 people, IIRC. And if a new governor fired everyone on the panel and rigged it for trumplestiltskin it'd be super obvious that's what they were doing.. complete perversion of justice and Probably not something a governor would want on their track record. Not that trump's ass isn't grass federally and in other states, but it's Really cooked in Georgia.

A state judge in Georgia has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to derail his potential prosecution for attempting to subvert the 2020 election results.

In a nine-page ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said it’s simply too soon for Trump or his allies to seek to prohibit Georgia prosecutors from continuing to investigate him — in large part because he hasn’t been indicted yet.

“[W]hile being the subject (or even target) of a highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides a basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigation,” wrote McBurney, who spent a year overseeing District Attorney Fani Willis’ special grand jury investigation of Trump’s election-related actions.

In an aside, McBurney made a clear reference to Trump’s effort to capitalize on his legal troubles as well: “And for some, being the subject of a criminal investigation can, a la Rumpelstiltskin, be turned into golden political capital, making it seem more providential than problematic.”

He also noted that Trump had already been admonished by federal courts — in his bid to short-circuit a potential prosecution for hoarding classified documents — when the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals shot down his bid to reclaim items seized from his estate by the FBI.

The scene outside the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown Atlanta is perhaps the biggest indication that something major could soon be happening inside.

The road in front of the building has been closed to traffic, orange barricades and metal barriers line the street, and officers from both the sheriff’s and marshal’s offices have a visible presence.

Monday morning, a bomb-sniffing dog was brought in to check media vehicles.

The dramatically increased security is one of numerous signs that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will soon be presenting her 2020 election interference case to a grand jury.

Willis, who has been investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his allies meddled in Georgia's 2020 presidential election, has sent subpoenas to witnesses in the probe, telling them to be prepared to testify before the end of the month.

The extra security measures in place Monday were expected after Willis sent the chief judge and law enforcement officials letters this year indicating her office could seek indictments in the first half of August.

“I respectfully request that judges not schedule trials and in person hearings during the weeks beginning Monday, August 7 and Monday, August 14,” Willis wrote in her letter to the chief judge in May.

An Atlanta-area prosecutor has notified at least two witnesses to appear before a grand jury early next week, the most significant indication of her intention to seek indictments in the investigation of how Donald Trump and others tried to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Former Georgia Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan, a Republican, said Saturday on CNN that he has been told to appear Tuesday before a Fulton County grand jury to testify about the efforts by Trump and his allies. Independent journalist George Chidi posted on social media later Saturday that he’d been told to appear before the grand jury on Tuesday, too.

The upcoming appearances signal that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is moving forward with a grand jury presentation where she’s expected to seek charges against more than a dozen people stemming from her investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Fulton County probe brings the possibility of a fourth indictment against Trump, taking the GOP frontrunner even further into uncharted legal territory. Trump’s legal troubles have dominated the Republican primary for months, with the former president casting his indictments as politically motivated and frequently utilizing them in fundraising pitches.

“I did just receive notification to appear on Tuesday morning at the Fulton County grand jury and I certainly will be there to do my part in recounting the facts,” Duncan, a CNN contributor, told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday.

“I have no expectations as to the questions, and I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me,” Duncan said.

Georgia law is unusual in that special purpose grand juries – which have broad investigative powers – are not permitted to issue indictments. When the subpoenaed witnesses appear before the regular grand jury, those grand jurors will hear the witnesses’ testimony for the first time with a narrower purpose at hand: to approve or reject indictments.

As her investigation has expanded, Willis has been weighing racketeering charges in the Trump case. RICO – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – is a statute the district attorney has spoken fondly of and used in unorthodox ways to bring charges against teachers as well as musicians in the Atlanta area.

Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe.

Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.

While Trump’s January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and effort to put forward fake slates of electors have long been considered key pillars of Willis’ criminal probe, the voting system breach in Coffee County quietly emerged as an area of focus for investigators roughly one year ago. Since then, new evidence has slowly been uncovered about the role of Trump’s attorneys, the operatives they hired and how the breach, as well as others like it in other key states, factored into broader plans for overturning the election.

Together, the text messages and other court documents show how Trump lawyers and a group of hired operatives sought to access Coffee County’s voting systems in the days before January 6, 2021, as the former president’s allies continued a desperate hunt for any evidence of widespread fraud they could use to delay certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

 Last year, a former Trump official testified under oath to the House January 6 select committee that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020,  that included Trump. 

Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

Investigators have scrutinized the actions of various individuals who were involved, including Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official who authored the letter of invitation referenced in text messages and other documents that have been turned over to prosecutors, multiple sources told CNN.

They have also examined the involvement of Trump’s then attorney Rudy Giuliani – who was informed last year he was a target in the Fulton County investigation – and fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell as part of their probe, according to people familiar with the matter.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office declined to comment.

The letter of invitation was shared with attorneys and an investigator working with Giuliani at the time, the text messages obtained by CNN show.

A ‘written invitation’ to access voting systems
On January 1, 2021 – days ahead of the January 7 voting systems breach – Katherine Friess – an attorney working with Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other Trump allies shared a “written invitation” to examine voting systems in Coffee County with a group of Trump allies.

That group included members of Sullivan Strickler, a firm hired by Trump’s attorneys to examine voting systems in the small, heavily Republican Georgia county, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

That same day, Friess sent a “Letter of invitation to Coffee County, Georgia” to former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who was working with Giuliani to find evidence that would back up their baseless claims of potential widespread voter fraud, according to court documents filed as part of an ongoing civil case.

Friess then notified operatives who carried out the Coffee County breach and others working directly with Giuliani that Trump’s team had secured written permission, the texts show.

The messages and documents appear to link Giuliani to the Coffee County breach, while shedding light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and the battleground state operatives who worked together to provide unauthorized individuals access to sensitive voting equipment.

Breaking into Coffee County
Shortly after Election Day, Hampton – still serving as the top election official for Coffee County – warned during a state election board meeting that Dominion voting machines could “very easily” be manipulated to flip votes from one candidate to another. It’s a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

But the Trump campaign officials took notice and reached out to Hampton that same day. “I would like to obtain as much information as possible,” a Trump campaign staffer emailed Hampton at the time, according to documents released as part of a public records request and first reported by the Washington Post.

In early December, Hampton then delayed certification of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia by refusing to validate the recount results by a key deadline. Coffee County was the only county in Georgia that failed to certify its election results due to issues raised by Hampton at the time.

Hampton also posted a video online claiming to expose problems with the county’s Dominion voting system. That video was used by Trump’s lawyers, including Giuliani, as part of their push to convince legislators from multiple states that there was evidence the 2020 election results were tainted by voting system issues.

Text messages and other documents obtained by CNN show Trump allies were seeking access to Coffee County’s voting system by mid-December amid increasing demands for proof of widespread election fraud.

Coffee County was specifically cited in draft executive orders for seizing voting machines that were presented to Trump on December 18, 2020, during a chaotic Oval Office meeting, CNN has reported. During that same meeting, Giuliani alluded to a plan to gain “voluntary access” to machines in Georgia, according to testimony from him and others before the House January 6 committee.

Days later, Hampton shared the written invitation to access the county’s election office with a Trump lawyer, text messages obtained by CNN show. She and another location elections official, Cathy Latham, allegedly helped Trump operatives gain access to the county’s voting systems, according to documents, testimony and surveillance video produced as part of a long-running civil lawsuit focused on election security in Georgia.